The
easiest, most obvious, and typically accurate criticism of urban
crime reporting is that the big picture gets lost in all the noise.
As reporters jump from crime scene to crime scene – seeking out
detectives for quotes, interviewing witnesses – it's easy to ignore
the systemic malfunctions that have kept poor neighborhoods broken
for decades.

Philip Bennett, the managing editor of FRONTLINE, the landmark, high quality
PBS newsmagazine produced from WGBH's Allston headquarters, is said to be a
"stealth candidate" for the job of replacing outgoing Boston Globe editor
Martin Baron.

Bennett was hired to cover local news when he first came to the Globe and eventually became Foreign News
Editor.

If I were a betting man, I'd say the next editor of the Boston
Globe will be either Managing Editor Caleb Solomon, the newsroom's current
number two; or former Globe Washington Bureau chief and Pulitzer Prize winner,
David Shribman, who now helms the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

No one but a handful of executives at the New York Times, which
owns the Globe, and Globe publisher Christopher Mayer, know who is in the
running.

The Washington Post today confirmed what for weeks had been
rumored: That Boston Globe editor
Marty Baron would exit Morrissey Boulevard to take charge of the Washington
Post - a regional newspaper with a
national footprint which, for a variety of reasons, has lost much of its
historic élan.

The timing of the move is tinged with a touch of Hollywood. Washington operates on a
two-year cycle, just as Congress does. But the quadrennial warp and weft of the
presidential election is the rhythm that matters most. The appointment of a
forceful talent like Baron at this particular moment reassures the imperial
egos of the scribbling class that the stars are still in the heavens.

Today I find myself in the frustrating position of having to urgently explain the term "rape culture" to two members of the mainstream media, in response to two isolated articles that desperately misunderstand 1_ the extent to which rape and sexual violence continue to prevail throughout the world at large, 2_ the ways that said sexual violence epidemic is normalized by the media today.

Ruh roh. An editor at Mediate grabbed this screenshot of the Herald's website yesterday -- accidentally using the second-coming-of-bin-Laden terror banner when they presumably meant to use the fellating-the-advertisers banner.

Meanwhile, in other Herald-fail news, former Herald editor Kevin Convey was canned yesterday from the NY Daily News -- to make way for the former editor of Rupert Murdoch's disgraced News of the World

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Boston Globe's Pulitzer-winning series of stories that explored the extent of the Catholic Church's
complicity in a horrifying, decades-long cover-up of child rape by the
clergy. The Phoenix broke that story nearly a year earlier, in a series that you can read online here

The Boston Globe's long-awaited paywall is here! Aren't you super-psyched about forking over $3.99 a week to read Boston Globe journalism? Good, because Marty says you're not allowed to read online for free anymore. However: if you'll allow the Globe to hand-deliver its four-pound doorstop of a Sunday print publication to your residence, the price of accessing the new BostonGlobe.

On Tuesday, the broadsheet published a piece by Geoff Edgers -- the Globe's designated arts troll -- in which the author manufactured some petit outrage around a misleading claim that the Museum of Fine Arts was charging an outrageous amount of money to view Christian Marclay's 24-hour film "The Clock," which is sort of the Lady Gaga of contemporary art pieces.

At last weekend's NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MEDIA REFORM, the Free Press folks asked me to bring together a cross-section of our fair city's movers and shakers for a panel called "BIG NEWS IN BOSTON: THE STATE OF BOSTON MEDIA." (You can stream the entire panel here or download it below.) These things typically turn into genteel supper-club conversations at best, and circle jerks at worst.

Alex Beam has more beef than 50 Cent. The Boston Globe columnist is a longtime enemy of all bloggers, prone to channeling his insecurities through blind swipes at faceless basement dwellers. And while he's always been a crotchety curmudgeon, Beam has only gotten worse since he was banished to the G section; a famously lazy Luddite, he's basically Boston Herald writer Joe Fitzgerald without the veteran fetish.

As our city girds itself for the tsunami of book boosterism
that's about to sweep Copley Square this weekend (to refresh your
memory on just how incredible last year's Boston Book Fest was, check out our 2009 podcast archives), it seems like this is the perfect opportunity to wax introspective on one of the greatest novels of all time.